Andy Coulson and three News of the World colleagues 'utterly corrupted' the paper, the judge in the phone-hacking trial has been told. Photograph: Matthew Lloyd/Getty Images

Andy Coulson and three former newsdesk executives “utterly corrupted” the News of the World and turned it into a “thoroughly criminal enterprise”, the judge in the phone-hacking trial has been told.

Crown prosecutor Andrew Edis QC said the phone-hacking victims of the now-defunct Sunday tabloid “read like a Who’s Who of Britain in the first five years of this century”.

He said “the full extent of hacking will never be known” but that it included “politicians, actors, footballers, suspected criminals, actual criminals, indeed almost anyone who appeared in the newspaper appeared on that list”.

Coulson is facing up to two years in prison after Edis told the court that this was the maximum sentence for conspiracy to hack phones.

Edis said the court will be seeking to recover £750,000 in costs from Coulson and his former colleagues.

The barrister said it was not clear whether News International, now known as News UK, was bound to indemnify Coulson for his portion of those costs, which will be substantial.

Edis made his remarks on the first day of a sentencing hearing for the four individuals formerly associated with News of the World who had already pleaded guilty to hacking and for Coulson, who was found guilty by a jury of a conspiracy to hack phones last week.

The four were former newsdesk editors Greg Miskiw, James Weatherup and Neville Thurlbeck, as well as phone hacker Glenn Mulcaire, who was first recruited by Miskiw in 2001 and who earned “more than £500,000” from the paper over five years.

“Between them these defendants utterly corrupted that newspaper which became at the highest level a thoroughly criminal enterprise,” said Edis.

“Each of these four defendants are people who between can be described as highly paid and influential employees of a national newspaper. Each of them was responsible at different times for the conduct of many journalists.

“Between them these defendants utterly corrupted that newspaper which became at the highest level a thoroughly criminal enterprise,” said Edis.

“Between them the conspirators, hacked phones on many hundreds of occasions and of hundreds of people, The full extent of the hacking will never be known,” he added.

Even court injunctions did not stop the paper’s criminal activities, with Edis citing the hacking of the murderers of the toddler James Bulger, whose identities and whereabouts are covered by a lifetime court order.

Edis said the description of the hacking at the paper as “industrial scale” was justified.

He added: “Anyone who has ever suggested or believed or was being told that the phone hacking revealed in 2006 and 2007 was the work of a single rogue reporter need only look at the four defendants in the dock.”

Edis said Coulson participated in the criminal enterprise, describing the hacking as part of “systemic misconduct approved and practised in by the editor himself”.

He said there was “routine invasion in search of stories” at the paper which had “the obvious capability to do serious harm to the victims”.

Edis used the case of the hacking of Simon Hoggart, the recently deceased Guardian journalist, as an example of the “great distress” the newspaper caused.

He told Mr Justice Saunders that he was hacked because the paper found out he had had an affair with Kimberly Fortier, the then publisher of the Spectator magazine.

“There does not seem to be any public interest at all whether or not it [the story about Hoggart] had been obtained by phone hacking but it was and that inevitably caused great distress to the family of the late Mr Hoggart and to Mr Quinn [Fortier’s husband].”

He said the hacking of her phone led to the front-page exclusive in relation to Hoggart, but that he was just a “byproduct” of the paper’s real reason for hacking her phone which was an investigation into a suspected affair she was having with the then home secretary David Blunkett.

The Blunkett story, also a News of the World splash in 2004, was one of three stories that led to the tabloid being awarded the newspaper of the year award the following year.

“Plainly that award in the newspaper industry which was the subject of considerably pride both to the newspaper generally and to the journalist in particular arose in part from phone hacking,” said Edis.

“This whole series of events caused Mr Blunkett a great deal of distress,” he added.

Edis said it was known that the paper had hacked employees of the royal family when Mulcaire was convicted of hacking in 2006 but it is now known that it went much wider and included the direct hacking of Prince William, Prince Harry and Kate Middleton in 2005 and 2006.

Mr Justice Saunders said it was not his remit to assess why the crown did not decide to reveal Prince William and Prince Harry were hacked as part of the case against Mulcaire in 2006 and that this had been raised during the Leveson inquiry.

Agreeing, Edis said that Leveson had found that the decision to ringfence the princes from the adverse publicity this would have unleashed was justified at the time and taken out of the “desirable respect for the privacy of the royal family in so far as possible”.

Opening the crown’s case against the defendants who pleaded guilty before the trial started, Edis told Saunders that Mulcaire had earned more than £500,000 from the paper, starting with a contract split into weekly payments of £1,769 or £92,000 a year. This rose to £2,019 a week or £104,000 in July 2003.